


you got the guts of a guppy, but I could hit that

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombieland AU, but fun!, the relationships are really secondary to me just rambling for 7k about Sansa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-07 14:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21218180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Sansa Stark survives the apocalypse by being anxious, savvy, and clinging to her best friend (which he IS, no matter what HE has to say about it), Jaime Lannister.or: a Zombieland AU featuring Sansa as Columbus and Jaime as Tallahasse.





	you got the guts of a guppy, but I could hit that

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I say this a lot, but I Really Don't Know what this is. Mostly I wanted to write a Zombieland AU featuring overly peppy Sansa and grumpy Jaime, and it evolved into this? I don't know! Here you go! It's free, so!

So. The beginning of Sansa’s Zombieland story is a bit of a downer. She prefers to gloss over it every time she meets someone new.

Just…remember. It leads to her standing behind the protective flung-out arm of her best friend in the world (no matter what _he_ might have to say about it) as he holds up his gold-plated shotgun hand and points it at a literal knight in blue armor. That’s awesome enough on its own, but when said best friend flings out said protective arm, Sansa spies the embroidery thread bracelet she made for him the first year of the apocalypse, which he claimed to have thrown out the window almost immediately after she gave it to him. But there it is, wriggling free from where he has apparently been hiding it under the thick band of his no-longer-functional watch.

So sure, there are still zombies. And medieval knights, apparently. But at least if they’re going to die together in this fucking Duncan the Tall museum, Sansa will know for a _fact_ that her best friend loves her. That’s not a bad way to end, considering how it starts.

* * *

Okay. The downer part.

First she follows her boyfriend to Kings Landing for school, which is a huge mistake, because he quickly reveals himself to be the kind of shitty, manipulative guy who isolates a girl from her friends and family without her even realizing it. It takes her big brother Robb showing up one weekend and smashing Joffrey’s face a bit when he sees Joffrey hitting Sansa for Sansa to realize how bad it’s gotten. Robb stays with her for another few days, and he takes her home at the end of the semester, and she manages to move on and go back to school for the next term, but…

Well, when your abuser is Joffrey Baratheon, it’s not like you have a lot of options for friends. Even at University, he’s this level of well-known that she couldn’t ever touch. His grandfather is on the board or something, and Joffrey’s _mega_ rich, so all the people she thought were her friends turn out to have been Joffrey’s friends all along. So she’s alone. Alone, friendless, boyfriend less. She works her way through a collection of romance novels and cries about them, but her grades are better, so at least there’s that! She always tries to be optimistic on the phone to her parents or Robb or her cousin Jon. Occasionally she tells the truth to her littler siblings Arya and Bran, because they always seem to know when she’s lying, but she’s good at being upbeat and optimistic. She fools most of them.

So that’s like even _before_ the zombies. It gets worse.

* * *

There’s this pretty girl one floor up. Shae. She keeps crazy hours, and Sansa hears her coming home late when she’s up drinking tea after waking up from nightmares, so Sansa feels like they have this connection even though Shae barely knows her name. Shae is pretty, but she has this kind of underlying look of toughness, which Sansa loves. She wants to be like Shae. She’s like ninety percent sure she wants to _kiss_ Shae.

Shae, though, hasn’t shown her much interest except to be _nice_ when they pass each other in the hall, which is obviously fine. Like, Shae doesn’t owe her anything. Except then one night Shae starts pounding on Sansa’s door, begging to be let in. Sansa makes her some tea and holds her hand and they sit together on the couch as Shae sobs through a story about some crazy guy who grabbed her arm and bit her on the way home.

Blah blah blah, everyone knows where this is going. Shae starts vomiting and then shrieking and then trying to bite Sansa, and so Sansa ends up pulling the lid off her toilet and smashing Shae in the head with it.

After that, the zombies are just…everywhere.

She doesn’t know for a fact what happened to the rest of her family. Jon calls and tells her that he’s safe at his school up north because the zombies are slower in the cold. He says she should try and get there, but that’s miles and miles, all the way past Winterfell, and the roads are blocked with panicked people fleeing the city. Sansa’s parents and other siblings still at home don’t answer when she calls, and sometimes Sansa tries to convince herself that maybe they went to be with Jon and all forgot their cellphones, but she knows they’re probably dead.

The one she knows for sure...

And, okay. She still has trouble talking about it, so usually she runs it down like “I don’t know what happened to most of my family. My brother Robb is dead”, and she hopes no one asks, because she doesn’t want to have to tell them that Robb called her after he had been bitten trying to protect his girlfriend. He had locked himself in the restaurant bathroom, and she could hear the screeching of the zombies outside trying to get in, and he told her that one of them was Talisa.

“Robb,” she said. “If you were bitten…”

“I know,” he said, and Sansa started crying immediately. “I know. I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She stayed on the phone with him until he turned, and _anyway_! It’s fine! Sansa’s fine! She has _totally_ dealt with that trauma and hasn’t spent the past five years deeply repressing it so that even the words “brother”, “Robb”, or “Olive Garden” are enough to send her scrambling for the nearest exit so she can cry and/or throw up! Nope. Only healthy coping mechanisms for Sansa Stark!

* * *

Less of a downer: it turns out that Sansa’s actually pretty great at surviving! Not because she’s got any survival skills at all, but she spent the whole past semester being alone and kind of anxious, and those things turn out to come in handy in Zombieland.

(That’s another thing. Most people call it things like “The After” or “The Apocalypse” or “The Wasteland” or whatever other sad, grim, edgelord thing they think makes it sound badass and depressing and cool. Sansa started calling it Zombieland! With an exclamation point to make it fun! It sounds like a theme park that way. Jaime hates it. Or, okay. Everyone hates it. But Sansa doesn’t!)

The first few weeks, Sansa mostly still hangs out in her apartment building. She takes Shae’s apartment, since Shae is dead and zombified in hers. She loads up on food and packs a bag with wheels so she can get out of there quick if she has to. She works out, since it seems like being in shape might help. Shae has an elliptical! Or had, until Sansa killed her, anyway.

Then the smell starts getting to her. Not just poor, dead Shae in Sansa’s place, but _everywhere_. The air is filled with the smell of them, and Sansa knows the food and electricity won’t last forever, so she may as well _try_ to get up north, especially since summer is coming and it’s going to be hot _and _stinky in Kings Landing soon. So she packs her things, gets a few personal items from her apartment that smell absolutely disgusting after being in the proximity of poor, dead Shae for weeks, and she leaves.

* * *

She spent those first few nights of Zombieland taking notes, while the internet was still up. Outside there was screaming and shooting and zombified moaning, but Sansa just put in her headphones, booted up Spotify and Wikipedia, and got to work. She looked up things like lockpicking, hot-wiring cars, how to use guns, what to do for different injuries, what kinds of berries are safe to eat. Things that she knew would come in handy once civilization utterly collapsed.

She was a little worried about the hot-wiring cars part, but it turns out to be actually kind of easy! But most of the time she doesn’t even need to, because there are so many cars abandoned with the keys still in. Some of them had the doors open and the battery dead, but Sansa gets lucky. The real problem is that there are so many traffic gridlocks that even when she _does _get a car to work, she can usually only make it a few streets by crashing along the sidewalk until she meets some blockage and has to get out and find a new one. But it beats walking all that way, and zombies are pretty slow and stupid. A couple of streets away is usually far enough that she can shake any persistent tails.

Finally, she makes it out of the city and onto the highway, and she gets to drive a few miles that way. Her car runs out of gas eventually, but there aren’t many zombies so far from the city, so she keeps walking for a while, pulling her wheeled suitcase along behind her.

She hears the car coming and moves off to the side to stay out of their way. She considers hiding in the woods, but she _really _doesn’t want to. She’s a little more afraid of zombies than people at this point. The woods seem like a mistake.

She watches him carefully when she hears him braking. She’s got a gun that she took off a dead cop, and she theoretically knows how to use it, but she’s not looking forward to it. She keeps it down by her side, hidden, just in case.

The guy who pulls up looks, in all sincerity, like someone took her ex-boyfriend and did away with all the vaguely weasel-like things about him that she didn’t notice until she realized he was a jerk. He has the same green eyes, if a little less narrowed in constant annoyance. The same golden hair, if a little longer. But this guy is a full adult, and his jaw and smile are, frankly, impossible. Someone reached into her brain and invented her ideal dude. That’s the only explanation.

“You’re alive,” he says, sounding just as shocked as she is.

“Uh,” she replies. “Am I?”

* * *

Turns out The Hottest Man Alive is named Jaime Lannister, and he’s Joffrey’s uncle.

“Hard pass,” she says when she realizes it, and she starts to open the car door to literally flee from his presence, but he stops her and convinces her how little he likes his nephew.

“He’s probably dead now, anyway,” he says, almost brightly. “Most of the rest of my family is.”

Sansa stays, primarily because she’s tired of talking to herself.

* * *

So then a year passes.

It’s a bit of a jump, but…

Well, obviously lots of things happen. Jaime turns out to be kind of standoffish and defensive, like he’s got a thousand emotional walls that he builds between he and Sansa to keep her from getting too close. He’s irritated by pretty much everything she does after the relief to see another living person wears off. He puts up with her for three days before he starts grumbling about wanting to be rid of her, but Sansa has already seen beneath his surly exterior, so she doesn’t bother listening.

Besides, his super cool prosthetic gun hand is tough to get on and off without a second person around. He says his brother got him for it as a joke initially, after he lost the real one in an accident. It’s a shotgun that he can strap to his wrist. It’s plated in gold. It’s extremely rad but also impractical, because there are so many straps that go to difficult-to-reach places. So he can bitch as much as he wants about Sansa’s sunny optimism, but he needs her.

He grumbles when she makes him a friendship bracelet. He complains when she reads some of her books aloud when they’re driving. He rolls his eyes when she tries to play road trip games like she used to play with her siblings.

But, like…he can try as much as he wants to seem like a badass or whatever, but Sansa knows the truth. He doesn’t want her gone. He comforts her when some guy they meet on the road tells them that the north is even more of a wasteland than Kings Landing, and that Jon’s college was a ghost town when the guy was there weeks ago. He finally lets her start driving his precious pickup truck, which he has spray painted with the name Honor on Wheels because he’s a secret dork. When she gets into this dark mood and kind of freaks out because they don’t have anything to move towards, since everywhere they go is just as bad off as the places they left, he takes her to this tacky souvenir shop and they spend a few hours smashing everything in it. They make a fun team, Sansa thinks! Everyone who meets them seems confused as to why they work, but they _do_. Jaime is tough and glowery, and Sansa is bright and flowery, and together they’re better at surviving than most people.

“I don’t get attached,” Jaime tells her, early and often. He talks about his puppy Myrcella, and how he lost her near the beginning and made a pact with himself that he wouldn’t let anyone close ever again. Warning, like he thinks he has a chance at saying it convincingly enough for her to believe him.

“You _are_ attached,” she points out every time, grinning. And Jaime grumbles and looks away and changes the subject.

So stuff _happens_. A whole year! In Zombieland! Of course stuff has happened! But it’s mostly just driving around, meeting other survivors and then eventually moving on.

And then, a year in, they pull into the parking lot of a grocery store, and they’re walking around inside and looking for packaged foods that haven’t yet passed the expiration date, and then they hear someone out front, trying to steal their car.

They head outside, Jaime wielding his shotgun hand and Sansa holding the rifle that she’s only allowed to use in emergencies.

And Arya is behind the wheel of the car.

* * *

So then, blah blah blah again, lots of crying and hugging, both of which are from Sansa mostly but Arya _kind of_, and then lots of talking over each other to explain where they’ve been while Jaime stands off to the side looking openly quite stricken and Arya’s traveling companion mostly looking annoyed.

“So we aren’t stealing their car, I take it?” Arya’s friend asks.

* * *

Jaime seems maudlin when he’s convinced that Sansa’s going to abandon him, but then he acts all annoyed and put-upon when instead they add two to their traveling party.

Arya, apparently, spent the past year in the company of the world’s sexiest amateur con artist. Margaery Tyrell Sansa’s ideal lady in the way that Jaime is her ideal dude. Except Margaery is Sansa’s type in a way that feels dangerous. She’s sly, pretty, quietly vicious. Everything she says seems tinged with malice that makes her even hotter. She butts heads with Jaime almost immediately, but Sansa would never try to make her leave. Arya and Margaery have bonded in the same way that Sansa and Jaime have.

The thing about Zombieland is that bonds form _quick_. By the end of the first month with Jaime, Sansa was ready to call him the best friend she’s ever had. By the end of the first _year_, they’re basically platonic soulmates. Arya and Sansa are sisters, and there’s a bond there that no one can touch, obviously, but Zombieland bonds are ironclad.

After a rocky first month, they all start to reluctantly get along. Seems like it has to happen if you don’t want to literally murder each other, spending so long together in a car, driving around the country, looking for a safe place to stay. Margaery and Jaime bond over weapons. Arya and Jaime bond over cars. Sansa and Margaery bond over, well, seemingly everything, to Arya’s growing annoyance.

Arya starts a habit of constantly asking Jaime how he lost his hand, to which Jaime always comes up with some elaborate lie with a straight face. Sansa chooses to believe that the story he told her ages ago is the truth—that it was amputated after damage sustained in a car wreck. It seems most reasonable, sure, but mostly Sansa just likes to think he was being honest with _her_.

* * *

They find a few places to camp out for weeks at a time, and they run into trouble a few more. One particularly scary time sees them ambushed by zombies in what they thought was an empty storage facility. Sansa winds up separated from the others, running down the aisles of storage containers, surrounded by zombies. She manages to climb up onto a roof and escape on her own, and she finds her way back to the parking lot where Arya, Margaery, and Jaime are all freaking out and trying to figure out how to find her. When they see her, they all come running, and they’re _definitely _all crying even though they deny it later. Jaime reaches her first, and he actually _hugs_ her, and he’s so fucking angry, and he says, “I told you to stick close, Myrcella! You can’t just run off!” which makes Sansa laugh, finally, and break the tension.

“You just called me your _dog’s_ name!” she coos. “Aww, that must mean you really love me.”

Jaime goes back to grumbly and standoffish, complaining about how she never looks out for herself, and Margaery and Arya pretend like they weren’t crying, and for like three weeks afterward they always call out to Sansa like they might call out to a dog. “C’mere Sansa! C’mere girl!” which seems to amuse even _Jaime_.

And there’s Gendry, too. This sort of odd, shirt-averse boy who keeps showing up any time they stay longer than a week in any one place. Sansa and Jaime are both in agreement on not trusting him, but then Margaery just rolls her eyes and says, “he has a crush on your sister”, and Sansa starts to notice Arya’s stubborn blush every time she talks to him, and the way she literally drools when she has an opportunity to watch him kill six zombies with an enormous hammer. The rest of them don’t shut up about that for _years_.

* * *

The big thing, though. The biggest thing. The thing that almost gets them _all _killed—but also, in the end, gets Sansa a girlfriend!—happens about three months after Arya and Margaery join she and Jaime on the road.

A bunch of stuff, most of which Sansa would rather just _move on _from, happens at the mansion of Jaime’s favorite actor, Arthur Dayne. But the thing that’s most important to Sansa is that she and Margaery drink a bunch and talk about their pasts.

Or, well, Sansa talks about her past. Margaery avoids real discussion. Dodges it effortlessly. They get steadily drunker on a bottle of _very_ expensive wine while Jaime and Arya do some target practice elsewhere in the house. There’s something soft about Margaery on that night that Sansa has never seen before, and Sansa can kind of see who she might have been before whatever happened in her life to ruin her ability to trust people.

Sansa pulls Margaery to her feet to dance with her. Swaying in the middle of the room, dancing to the music that Sansa put on the record player earlier.

“What am I doing?” Margaery wonders to herself, but she’s smiling. She rests her forehead against Sansa’s. “You’re some kind of witch, you know. I’m convinced.”

“A pretty witch, at least,” Sansa says gently, and Margaery laughs.

“Too pretty. You beguile innocent young women with your face. Lure them into a trap.”

“Good thing you’re not that innocent,” Sansa replies, trying to sound flirty for once in her life. Margaery bites her bottom lip, and then she leans in and kisses Sansa.

It’s...perfect. Warm and perfect. Margaery tightens her hold on Sansa and pulls her closer, and Sansa allows herself to be pulled. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt like this. Hindsight bias, whatever. Surely this is the best kiss of her life.

* * *

And then Margaery leaves a note, and she takes Sansa’s sister and Jaime’s car and fucking _abandons them_.

* * *

Turns out Margaery got cold feet, Arya was feeling boxed in, and they both wanted to go to this carnival that they had been talking about going to since they met up with each other. Which is like…fine. But don’t leave in the middle of the night to do it, especially since it didn’t seem like they were planning to come back. Jaime wants to just leave them behind and keep going, but Sansa talks him into following them, and they end up mounting this super daring rescue that almost gets them killed. And there’s this moment when Margaery and Sansa are trapped at the top of this ride, one of those ones that goes up and down really fast. There’s a cluster of zombies down below. Arya is apparently _nowhere_. Jaime is trapped in a prize hut thing halfway across the park with like more than fifty zombies surrounding him. They’re going to die. They’re going to die, and it’s all Margaery and Arya’s fault, and Sansa starts to cry, and everything comes out all at once.

“You’re not the only one who’s fucking terrified!” she cries. Margaery is looking at her with shock. The careful Sansa Stark optimistic facade has been worn away completely. “Every single day! Of everything! Do you know how hard it is to pretend?”

“Then why bother pretending?” Margaery asks. Soft, like they aren’t trapped in an amusement park death trap with a horde of zombies waiting to eat them down below.

“Because someone has to!” Sansa shouts. “Someone has to keep us all together because we’re all alone out here! And maybe you think it’s easier to pretend you don’t need anyone, but I know it’s a lie!”

She’s literally sobbing by the end of it, and she’s so embarrassed that she’s probably going to die having a breakdown in front of the world’s sexiest amateur con artist, but then Margaery kisses her.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Why did you kiss me if you weren’t going to stay?” Sansa asks, and Margaery is crying, then, too, though she’s trying to hide it.

“Because I wanted to kiss you,” she says. “I’m not used to thinking beyond that. But then I _was_, and I realised how much I wanted you to, I don’t know. Hold my hand. Gods, don’t make me say it.”

“If I’m saying it, you have to too!”

“It isn’t easy for me,” Margaery says, and Sansa shakes her head.

“It isn’t easy for anyone,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be. You’re the bravest person I’ve met. I know you can say it. We’re going to fucking die, so you…”

But then, down below, they both spy Arya at the same time, gleefully carving through the zombie hordes with a fucking katana or something. She runs past, luring them away, pulling them into a trap and sending them careening over the ledge of a brick wall. Then she flicks a lit match in after them because apparently what she had been doing was laying a gasoline trail. All the zombies light up. It’s the worst smell in the world.

Jaime, apparently, had already been seconds away from saving them himself, as he had been able to take out all of his zombies with his, like, two guns somehow. He’s half annoyed that Arya showed him up so brilliantly, but he’s also half impressed, and Sansa hugs him and thanks him for _almost _saving them. He pretends like he’s not emotional about it—unless you count grumpy as an emotion—but Sansa can tell how worried he was in the way he hugs her back.

“Margaery kissed me,” Sansa whispers in his ear. Jaime just sighs.

* * *

Then, things are actually kind of okay. They move on. They keep moving. They drive and find new places and meet new people. Zombieland isn’t exactly _fun_, but it’s more fun when you’re surrounded by the people you love. Margaery lets down her walls enough to finally call Sansa her girlfriend. Arya eventually admits that she thinks Gendry is “okay”. Jaime smiles more than once a week. Everything is _good_!

(They do not—_ever_—talk about Arthur Dayne’s house. Not the fact that Margaery kissed Sansa and then basically kidnapped her little sister and ran off. Not the fact that Jaime got drunk enough and forgot to say “puppy”, the way he usually did, slipping up and dropping the bomb that Myrcella was his daughter. _Especially_ not the fact that Jaime and Margaery and Arthur thought it would be funny to prank Sansa by pretending Arthur was a zombie, assuming that she would just scream and run away, only for her to end up killing Jaime’s screen idol with a shotgun blast to the chest. They never talk about any of that.)

Maybe it’s because it’s so good that Sansa has found herself trying to find someone for Jaime. She and Margaery are doing well. She definitely saw Arya and Gendry hold hands for like a millisecond one day before Arya snatched her hand back and stormed off. Jaime continues to be their squad dad-slash-cool uncle. But he’s lonely! Margaery thinks she’s silly and too romantic. Arya doesn’t care _what_ Jaime is. Jaime would roll his eyes if she mentioned it to him. But Sansa can tell. She just knows these things.

It’s not like she hasn’t been trying. That pretty girl, Pia, was maybe a little bit too young for him, but she liked him a lot! Jaime just seemed more interested in dadding her. He denied his dad instincts later, of course, but this was after the Myrcella Reveal, so no one believed him. And there was that other woman, Hildy. She made her intentions _abundantly_ clear. Jaime mostly just seemed annoyed by them.

Actually, everywhere they go, Jaime is bombarded by lonely men and women. Sansa gets it. He’s a certified babe and a total catch. Sometimes she worries that she and Margaery and Arya are holding him back. Like maybe he _wants_ to get together with someone but feels like he’s responsible for his three wayward Zombieland buddies. Like a single dad afraid to date someone his kids might not like.

She mentions that to him once, and he glares at her and tells her to shut up, which means he doesn’t think they’re holding him back at all. But. Still. Sansa worries.

It’s just…she doesn’t know how to make him happy. She doesn’t know what he wants. She killed his idol, so it’s not like she can even suggest taking him to meet another one, since there’s no way he would trust her around them. She tried figuring out where he might want to visit, and all she got were annoyed grunts. Margaery and Arya think he just wants to be left alone, and they suggest leaving at least once a month, but Sansa never would. She knows Jaime’s heart, even if they don’t. If the three of them left, it would kill them.

So the knight thing. It really is her fault.

_But_, if that’s true, she must also deserve full credit for what happens after.

* * *

It starts because Jaime, one night at some abandoned mall they’ve spent the past three days in, as they’re drinking vodka and doing a little target practice with throwing knives, turns to her and says, “you know what would be a good idea?”

“Not throwing knives at things while drunk?” Sansa suggests. Jaime pouts at her and executes an extremely sloppy throw with his left hand. The knife bounces off the target and flops to the floor. He pouts even deeper. Sober Jaime is surly and standoffish. Drunk Jaime is extremely affectionate and also very pouty. Sansa likes them both, but Drunk Jaime is a lot more fun. It feels closer to real Jaime, too. Like he lets his guard down, just for a little.

“No,” he says. “Just…an island. Why haven’t we gone to an island? I feel like there aren’t going to be zombies on an island. Or maybe there are, but then we just kill all the ones that are there, and then there’s no zombies! Simple!”

He grins at her. That devastatingly handsome grin that made poor pretty Pia blush every time he sent it her way. Sansa is basically immune to it at this point except to think that it’s quite a nice smile and that she would like to see more of it.

“Yeah!” she says. “An island!”

* * *

Unlike most of their drunken ideas, the island thing sticks, and so Jaime finds them a giant map of Westeros in this old school building they’re looting.

“Tarth,” he says, pointing to a little green dot surrounded by blue. “I went there once. Absolutely beautiful. We should go there.”

“Tarth it is!” Sansa says.

* * *

Arya and Margaery are less than excited about the island plan, but they agree once Sansa points out that they can use it as a home base but still go exploring. Privately, she likes the idea of a little house on Tarth. She and Margaery in a lovely little bedroom with lace curtains and pastel colored walls. They could wear clothes that aren’t constantly a little bit dirty and a little bit blood-covered. Jaime would live right next door, and he and Sansa could go fishing for all their meals! Not that Sansa likes fish or fishing, but she could learn to like it! Arya would wander in and out, boating to the mainland and then back again whenever she needed. She’d love it, the freedom. Sansa would worry, but she knows Arya can take care of herself, so she would trust her.

It’s a pretty picture, and it’s something that Jaime wants, too. Maybe it will make up for the whole Arthur Dayne thing.

* * *

Except, well. Zombies happen. Then Margaery happens. And then Arya happens.

When they reach the coast, the pier is swarmed with zombies, so Margaery suggests blowing up Honor on Wheels 4 to distract them. Sansa isn’t there for that; she and Jaime are transporting their supplies across the parking lot, hoping to find a boat—any boat—that’s far enough away from the zombie clusters. Arya, of course, thinks Margaery’s a genius, and so the two of them blow up Jaime’s precious truck.

And it wasn’t as if Jaime didn’t know he was going to have to say goodbye to his truck. There are enough little boats still floating off the edges of the pier that they’ll have no trouble getting to Tarth, but there aren’t any ferries big enough to carry a whole vehicle, and none of them would know how to operate one even if there were. So there was definitely going to be a bit of a mournful goodbye. But why blow it up? It was a perfectly good truck!

The plan, rude as it was, does work, and the zombies leave the pier for long enough that Jaime can find a boat with a motor that still functions. Then they all pile in, and Jaime boats them all the way to Tarth in a mighty sulk.

Which is why, once they find a minivan that they can use to drive around the island (to Jaime’s near-apoplectic rage), Sansa immediately heads to the information center for a map, looking for something that might cheer her best friend up.

Hence: the Duncan the Tall Museum.

Sansa has always liked stories about knights and damsels. She’s always been kind of a softie about things like that. She loves the drama and the romance and just the niceness of a story where you know that even if a few bad things happen, it’s all eventually going to be all right. People are going to be happy.

Jaime’s kind of a shining knight. His pickup truck was both steed and armor, white and gleaming and Honor-able, and he’s handsome enough to be a knight for sure. And she _does_ love him, in a way that has, sure, been kind of a crutch and replacement for mom, dad, Robb, and Jon all at once. Basically anyone older than her that she cared about who isn’t here anymore. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real love. He’s her best friend. She loves him. She wants to cheer him up. She knows _he _likes stories about knights, too, because those were always the ones he listened to with the least grumbling when she was reading aloud to him in the year they spent with just the two of them.

“Are you serious?” Arya whispers to her when she realizes what road signs Sansa is following. Jaime and Margaery are already asleep in the backseat, because a few years in Zombieland have taught them all to sleep whenever and wherever they can, because you never know when you’re going to have to pull an all-nighter killing zombies at a carnival.

“I want to make it up to him!” Sansa hisses in reply.

“He’s a grown man. He’s like mom’s age. He’ll get over it.”

“There aren’t a lot of good things left in Zombieland,” Sansa chides her sister.

“Seven hells. I hate it when you call it that,” Arya groans.

“Well, I hate it when you call it the wasteland! Zombieland is more fun.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“You’re the one who ran off in the middle of the night to go to _a theme park_. You’d think you’d appreciate it more.”

“Couldn’t go one whole conversation without mentioning that, could you?”

“We’ve had at least two talks since the last mention.”

“So you’re keeping track, like a lunatic.”

“There will be swords at this museum, you know,” Sansa points out brightly to change the subject.

“Right. And who’s gonna use them?”

“Maybe Duncan had some small swords!”

“He wasn’t called Duncan the Small.”

“Maybe it was an opposite name! Like a white cat named midnight!”

“I absolutely cannot be the only one awake for this,” Arya says, but Sansa reaches over and grabs Arya’s hand before she can try and shake Margaery awake.

“Let them sleep! And it’s not like we had other plans, anyway! Why _can’t_ we go to a museum? Jaime will like it.”

“You care too much about what Jaime wants. It’s annoying.”

“He’s my best friend.”

“He doesn’t even like you.”

Sansa arches an eyebrow in her sister’s direction, because they both know that’s bullshit. Never mind that he’s called her his daughter’s name now three times in moments of extreme stress. Jaime doesn’t suffer fools. If he didn’t like her, he wouldn’t have put up with her for the past couple of years.

* * *

Obviously, things don’t go super well at the museum.

Or, well, they actually _do_ go super well. It just takes a little while, and first they go kind of poorly. Margaery takes off immediately for the gift shop, and Arya starts looking at a display of daggers, which Sansa _has_ to point out on her way by are basically small swords, so. She was right.

She follows Jaime, because she never wants to stop following Jaime when he’s like this. All enthusiastic and bright. He talks about how his mother used to tell him stories about Duncan the Tall, and how he used to want to be just like him.

“You _are_ just like him!” Sansa insists. “You saved me!” which makes Jaime look soft for just a second as he ruffles her hair.

They head into the main room of the exhibit, and they still don’t think anything is weird even though they notice an empty armor stand in a display case, and Jaime wonders where one of the swords has gone. Elsewhere, they can hear Arya and Margaery laughing and screeching and probably causing chaos, but Jaime is enthralled with this room in particular. He reaches for a case that has a bunch of swords in it, trying to figure out how to open it with one hand.

“Stop.”

The voice is deep, and booming, and Sansa is so startled that she literally forgets to scream as she whirls around to face the knight that has just entered the room. This tall, blue shape in armor, with a spiked helmet and a sword pointed right in Sansa’s direction. Jaime, of course, leaps to her aid, pushing her back with his outflung arm and raising his shotgun hand.

Sansa notices the friendship bracelet that Jaime pretended he lost years ago. She resigns herself to dying happy and a bit smug about herself.

“Do you really want to test how that armor holds up against a shotgun blast?” Jaime asks.

“Do you really want to die over a couple of ancient swords?” the knight replies.

“Please don’t hurt my dad,” Sansa blurts, grabbing Jaime’s arm, doing her best to seem younger and more terrified. “It’s my fault! I wanted to see the museum! I wanted to see the knights! We can leave!”

The knight wavers. Sansa can see the way the sword trembles in their grip, like they’re fighting with themselves to keep it up.

Finally, they sigh, and they lower it. Jaime lowers his shotgun. Sansa moves her grip to his left hand, clinging tight.

“Come on,” she says, tugging. To the knight, she says, “thank you. We’re so sorry for trespassing.”

“Wait,” the knight says. They reach up and pull off their helmet.

The blue knight is a woman. She has short, wavy blonde hair, and she’s taller even than _Jaime_. She fills the armor like it was made especially for her, and she holds that heavy ancient sword like it’s made of cardboard. Her face is set in a grim expression, and her pale, freckled skin is going red with a blush already. She isn’t pretty. She has bold features, like someone drew them to be as exaggerated as possible. A large, wide mouth. Crooked nose. Big, beautiful blue eyes. She has a scar on one cheek that mottles her skin. She isn’t pretty, and yet she still somehow feels like she stepped right out of one of Sansa’s childhood fantasies. Put Jaime and this blue knight together, and you would have Sansa’s long-ago perfect knight made flesh.

“Seven hells,” she says, and Jaime’s voice echoes her a moment later. The knight frowns at them. “You’re like a proper knight,” Sansa continues, wanting to reassure her. She feels, suddenly, a pang of remorse, remembering when she was in middle school and used to call Arya “Horseface”, after her friend Jeyne thought it up. She isn’t the same anymore. She was a child. Still. She knows how those things can linger, and she always wants to make it up to people, even people she didn’t know when she was like that.

“You don’t need to reload a sword,” the knight says stiffly. Jaime laughs. Barking, loud.

“Shit, that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard,” he says.

* * *

The knight’s name is Brienne, and it’s painful how awkward she is at first. She takes off the armor and seems to hunch to try and make herself smaller without the metal to shield her. She looks even bigger outside of it.

She tells them all that she has spent the past year alone on Tarth, after her father died of an illness. The two of them cleared the island of zombies in the first year, and they grew their own food and spent the intervening time making sure that most of the island could still run efficiently. There are windmills in the hills that still produce power. There are sheep and cows and goats. There are vegetables and fruits.

“We knew maybe someone would find us one day,” she says. “So we wanted to make Tarth into a sanctuary for them. And some people did, but they didn’t always stay long. Or they tried to take over, and dad and I did what we had to.” Her tone dares them to say anything, but Sansa knows better than anyone that sometimes you have to do the worst in Zombieland. “Then dad died, and it’s only me, now.”

Sansa remembers those first weeks before she met Jaime, and how lonely they were. She reaches out and puts her hand on Brienne’s arm.

“We’re here now, if you’ll have us,” she says.

* * *

Brienne shows them around the island. She gives them all bicycles, pointing out that they’re the most efficient mode of travel in Zombieland, though she reassures them that Tarth has been free of zombies for years. It’s almost a paradise.

Jaime is weird about it. He questions Brienne about everything. He frowns and inspects the windmills. He plainly hates his bike. He prods at their new hostess with a hint of a smile that might seem cruel, if Sansa didn’t know him so well.

“What’s your deal?” she hisses to him once, after he’s made some vaguely insulting comment about Tarth that makes Brienne glare and stalk away to show Arya and Margaery something.

“I don’t know,” Jaime says. “She’s annoying.”

* * *

“She’s hot,” Margaery says, three days later. The four of them are holed up in a pretty little house that Sansa loves. It’s just down the street from Brienne’s. There are houses enough for all of them, but Sansa knows it’s going to take a little time before the four of them are willing to spread out. They’re used to existing in a clump for safety. Even knowing that the entire island has an elaborate alarm system thanks to Brienne’s boredom, it isn’t enough to feel entirely safe just yet.

“No she isn’t,” Arya says. “She’s badass.”

“Two things can be true,” Margaery replies sagely. “Anyway, I don’t mean she’s pretty. Or even like, _handsome_, or whatever men say when they don’t want to admit they find a masculine woman kind of foxy. But there’s just something about a big lady swinging a sword.”

“Yeah,” Sansa and Jaime say at once. With, Sansa would argue, the same level of dreaminess. Sansa glances at Jaime immediately. She seems to be the only one who heard his quiet wistfulness. Her grin grows. He glares at her.

* * *

“I don’t know,” he says, not much later. “She has pretty eyes. She’s nice. Shut up.”

“I’m not saying anything,” Sansa whispers. She nudges her shoulder up against his, grinning at him. They’re sitting together out front, on watch. Sansa complained about being cold, so Jaime grumblingly draped a blanket around their shoulders. It’s so soft, Sansa can hardly stand it.

The moment, not the blanket. The blanket’s just all right.

“Myrcella,” she says quietly, suddenly, surprising even herself. She feels Jaime tense, and she snuggles closer in response. “Was she anything like me?”

Jaime sighs.

“Yeah,” he admits begrudgingly. “In some ways. She was quieter.”

“Nice,” Sansa says, dry, which makes Jaime grin a bit. She can see it in the moonlight.

“She was younger, though. Who knows? Might’ve grown up to be as annoying as you.”

“I hate you,” Sansa laughs, but she doesn’t move away. “I’m going to make you miserable until you make a move on our new knight.”

“I’m not making a move on anybody. I told you. I don’t need anyone. I’m not like you.”

“You’re not good at recognizing your own emotions, you mean,” Sansa points out. “You just blunder through life convinced that you don’t care about anyone, but I know the truth.”

“I never said I don’t care about anyone,” Jaime argues with a scoff, and Sansa remembers the green thread poking out from behind his watch, and she smiles.

She’s still going to make him miserable, though.

(She does, and he lasts exactly a week before he storms up to Brienne and asks her if it’s all right if he kisses her.)

(Obviously, Brienne says yes, because sometimes, even in Zombieland, things have happy endings.)

**Author's Note:**

> I know she doesn't SAY it here, but just imagine Margaery delivering the title line to Sansa lmao


End file.
